It’s a problem. You go to Italy and fall in love with the food. Then you come back home, and you don’t know where to start. That’s when you have to think like an Italian: ingredients and simplicity.

Recipes are easy to find on the internet, on TV, or in cookbooks. But mine are all from chefs and home cooks, those mentors in Italy who opened up their homes and kitchens to me and changed my life through food, one dish at a time. Now that I’m more often at home in the US rather than in Rome, I like to pay it forward by bringing what I’ve learned over the past 25 years of eating my way through Italy—with unabashed gusto and shameless greed!—to others.

Rigatoni All’Amatriciana

Flavors of Rome’s first in a series of cooking classes and presentations featuring the products of Gustiamo is scheduled for November 12 here in South Florida. In deference to the millions of you who won’t be able to attend, I offer one of the recipes we’ll use in the class, and my favorite of all the classic Roman pasta dishes—Rigatoni All’Amatriciana.